Grizzly's Travels

A Motorcycle Adventure

The first thing to go from the original bike was the Aughooowga horn (shown above) and the original V-Star horn was to be re-installed. The previous owner, as I said, was a bit of a hack and this was his signature greeting when he went on his club rides. When he installed this horn, he removed the original air cleaner and cold air box and installed twin K&M air cleaners under the gas tank. He also over-jetted the carbs which caused the bike to run extremely rich and backfire every chance it had.

The next thing to go were the signal / running lights. I don't know who his electrician was, but I have seem middle school kids do a better wiring job. The headlight was wired improperly as was that stupid horn. No wonder the battery never held a charge. I stripped out much of the old wiring and re-wired and soldered the connections covering these connections with heat shrink. In the case of the rear turn signals, I used barrel connectors as the rear fender will be interchangeable (more about this later).

I also discovered that one of the signals was shorting out inside and there was nothing that could be done about this so I changed them out with a set from a Harley Duce. I fabricated the stand-offs from chromed water supply piping as the lights did not come with any. What a great improvement!

I re-installed the original air box and added a new Kurakyn Hypercharger Pro. We removed the over-sized jets and re-jetted the cards to .020 over and now she runs like a champ. The gas mileage increased from 22 mpg to over 35 mpg in the city. I have not had the chance to give it a real good run on the highway at this time.

A friend of mine at work saw this gas cap on the net somewhere and decided to have a go at making one out of a scrap of aluminum. After he gave it to me, I took it down to Victoria Plating and had it chromed. Too bad this will not be moving over to the new bike.